Archive for the ‘MALCOLM X’ Category

We cannot think of being acceptable to others until we have first proven acceptable to ourselves.
Malcolm X Speaks

ON AFRICAN AMERICANS

We’re not Americans, we’re Africans who happen to be in America. We were kidnapped and brought here against our will from Africa. We didn’t land on Plymouth Rock – that rock landed on us.
Malcolm X, Harlem, cited in Goldman, “The Death and Life of Malcolm X”, p.157

One of the things that made the Black Muslim movement grow was its emphasis upon things African. This was the secret to the growth of the Black Muslim movement. African blood, African origin, African culture, African ties. And you’d be surprised – we discovered that deep within the subconscious of the black man in this country , he is still more African than he is American.

International Socialist Review, September-October 1967

Rev. Albert Cleage

Myths About Malcolm X:A Speech

Rev. Albert Cleage, chairman of the Detroit Inner City Organizing Committee, gave this speech at a memorial meeting for Malcolm X at the Friday Night Socialist Forum in Detroit, February 24, 1967.

You were very kind to ask me to be here.

I am not a Marxist – I don’t pretend to be, I don’t even pretend to know anything about it. I am a black man in a world dominated by white oppression, and that is my total philosophy. I would like to get rid of that oppression, and that is my total objective. So I bring to this occasion rather a simple approach – personal reflections on the significance of Malcolm X.I can remember a number of occasions when I talked to him, when I was with him, when I spoke on platforms with him; and so I am not indebted to printed material for my impressions of Malcolm X. I remember the last time he was in the city – not so much the speech, which was not one of his best by any means; it reflected, I think, much of the tension that he was under, much of the confusion, the constant living on the brink of violence. But I can remember him backstage, in the Gold Room I think they call it, of Ford Auditorium. Recently he had suffered smoke inhalation, the doctor had given him an injection, he was trying to sleep, he was irritable. But he was here because he had promised to be here, because he thought some people were concerned about what he had to say.I remember him at the King Solomon Baptist Church on one of the occasions he spoke there – sort of in concealment backstage, constantly harassed with the danger of assassination. And I can remember the occasion at the King Solomon Baptist Church when he gave the Message to the Grass Roots, which I think is his best speech, his most typical statement, and which I personally think is his last will and testament. I remember him, I talked to him, I agreed with him. He was a Muslim, I am a Christian, and yet I can think of no basic matter upon which we disagreed.Two years after his death Brother Malcolm is more important to more people than he was at any time during his lifetime. I think this is true. Young people who never saw him, who never heard him, speak of him with reverence and say, “I love Malcolm.” This is atremendous thing. Older people who heard and saw him select from the things they heard and saw the things they want to remember, or even the things it suits their purpose to remember. This too is quite a thing – that an individual should be important enough to be remembered even with distortions or for reasons not quite only of love.Brother Malcolm has become a symbol, a dream, a hope, a nostalgia for the past, a mystique, a shadow sometimes without substance, “our shining black prince,” to whom we do obeisance, about whom we write heroic poems. But I think Brother Malcolm the man is in danger of being lost in a vast tissue of distortions which now constitute the Malcolm myth. The Malcolm myth or the Malcolm myths, the complex of myths which more and more tend to cluster about Brother Malcolm, remind us of what happened to Jesus Christ. I think I understand much more now the things that are written and said about Jesus, because I can understand how the life of a man dedicated to people can so easily become a focal point for the things people want to make that life mean.The Malcolm myth or myths depend for substance upon the last chaotic and confusing year or two of his life – fragmentary statements growing out of his trip to Mecca and his efforts to bring the problems of black people in America to the attention of African leaders. Out of this period of his life comes the confusing complex of myths. According to the myth, his pilgrimage to Mecca turned Brother Malcolm into an integrationist. I’ve heard that seriously stated by people who claim to be scholars and students of the life of Brother Malcolm. In Mecca, they say, he saw blue-eyed whites and blacks worshipping and living together, in love, for the first time in his 39 years – and his whole concept of white people changed. This is the myth. And he rejected his former position that the white man is the enemy and that separation is inescapable. This is the myth.The implication here is that this new insight changed his orientation; that with this new insight he was now free to join the NAACP, or to sing We Shall Overcome with Martin Luther King, or to become a Marxist and join the Socialist Workers Party. And certainly, if we accept this basic myth as being true, as being fact, if his experience in Mecca changed his conception of white people, then all the implications certainly follow logically. If in terms of his experience in Mecca he came to believe that there is no enmity between black and white, that blacks and whites can march together in unity and brotherhood, then why shouldn’t he join the NAACP, or sing We Shall Overcome, or become a Marxist in the Socialist Workers Party?I say that is the myth, and from my personal point of view, realizing that we are in the position of the blind man who inspected the elephant and tried to describe what an elephant is, I say I do not believe this myth. I reject it completely, totally and absolutely. I say if Malcolm X, Brother Malcolm, had undergone this kind of transformation, if in Mecca he had decided that blacks and whites can unite, then his life at that moment would have become meaningless in terms of the world struggle of black people, and we would not have any occasion to be here this evening. So I say I do not believe it.Brother Malcolm knew history and he was guided by his interpretation of history. He interpreted the things that happened to him in terms of his knowledge and his understanding of the past. He would not have been taken in by what happened in Mecca. Brother Malcolm knew that the Arab Muslims had been the backbone of the slave trade. Those of you who have a sentimental attachment to the “Black Muslims” in America, or the Muslims that happen to be black, might not like to remember that the slave trade with black Africans in Africa was fostered, encouraged and carried on by the Arab Muslims in Africa. Brother Malcolm knew this. He would not have been taken in by the window dressing in Mecca. He would not have forgotten this important fact – that blacks and whites do not unite above the basic fact of race, of color. He would not have forgotten this in Mecca any more than in New York or Chicago or San Francisco. He knew that in Saudi Arabia they are still selling black Africans into slavery, they still make forays into Black Africa and bring back black slaves for sale in Arab Muslim countries. Brother Malcolm knew this. And to me it is preposterous to say that in Mecca he became an integrationist.Also, according to the myth, Brother Malcolm tried to internationalize the black man’s struggle in America. Certainly he brought the black man’s struggle to the attention of African leaders. The implication is that Brother Malcolm felt that the black man in Africa could help us through the United Nations and that we would be better off before the white man’s World Court than before the white man’s Supreme Court. I do not believe it. Malcolm knew that one cracker court is just like another cracker court. He knew it, I know it and you know it. And to say now that he came to the conclusion that, if he could get the black man’s problem in America before the World Court, it would somehow mysteriously be changed and transformed is ridiculous. To take it before the World Court would have been interesting – but certainly no solution. We are no more apt to get justice before the World Court than before the Recorder’s Court downtown here in the city of Detroit. Crackers run both of them.Don’t be afraid, brothers, don’t be afraid – I am not hurting the image of Malcolm. I am just’trying to save it, because you are about to lose it, you are about to forget what Malcolm said. By taking the last moments of confusion, when he was getting ready to be assassinated, and saying that the confused little statements he made in those last moments were his life – that’s a lie, that wasn’t his life. I heard him, I talked to him, I know what his life was, and he understood the relationship between blacks and whites.Certainly Brother Malcolm wanted to relate our struggle, the struggle of black people in America, to the struggle of black people everywhere. I say to the struggle of black people everywhere, becausethat is a struggle that he understood, that I understand and that you understand. I am not talking about relating it to the struggle of oppressed people everywhere, but relating it to the struggle of black people everywhere. But he expected little help from the Africans and the African nations. Malcolm wasn’t running around Africa thinking that the African nations were going to free us. Malcolm wasn’t that kind of an idiotic idealist. He went to our black brothers because they were our brothers. He talked to them about our problems because their problems are our problems, and we are as concerned about their problems as we want them to be about our problems. But he didn’t go to Africa expecting them to free us.Sometimes we forget that, and we sit around waiting for somebody in Africa to send somebody over here to free us – “like Malcolm said they were going to.” He never said it and they are never going to do it. If you are going to be free, you are going to free yourself, and that is what Malcolm told us. The African nations can’t free us, they can’t save us. They couldn’t save Lumumba in Africa, they couldn’t wreak vengeance upon those who perpetrated his death in Africa. They couldn’t save the Congo; they couldn’t save the black people of Rhodesia; they couldn’t free the black people of South Africa. Then why should we sit here in our own oppression, our own suffering, our own brutality, waiting for some mysterious transformation when black armies from Africa are coming over here and free us? They could use some black armies from over here to free them.Malcolm never said it, and don’t be misled by the statement that Malcolm tried to internationalize the black man’s struggle. He tried to tell us quite simply that the white man has given you hell here in the United States and he is giving black men hell all over the world. It is one struggle – black men fighting for freedom everywhere, in every country, in the United States, in Africa, in Vietnam, everywhere. Black men fighting against white men for freedom. He tried to tell you that the white man is not going to free you. I don’t care what persuasion or philosophy he has, he is not going to free you, because if he frees you, he must take something away from himself to give it to you.Funny how we can so easily forget what Malcolm said. I don’t believe it. Certainly he wanted to relate it to the black man’s struggle throughout the world. He knew we were struggling against the same enemy. He knew that we could expect no more justice from the World Court than from a Supreme Court. So much for the Malcolm myth.Brother Malcolm’s contribution is tremendous. What Brother Malcolm contributed to the black man’s struggle in America and throughout the world cannot be equaled or surpassed by the life of any man. Oh, we can think of individuals like Marcus Garvey. When he looked at the world and said, “Where is the black man’s government?” it was tremendous. Because he understood that the black man was engaged in a struggle against an enemy, and that if he was engagedin a struggle there were certain things that were necessary – he had to have power, he had to have a government, he had to have economies, he had to have certain things. Marcus Garvey understood it. But no man surpasses Malcolm in his understanding of the meaning of the struggle in which black people are engaged everywhere in the world. And there was no subterfuge or confusion or weak-kneed pussyfooting in Malcolm as long as he lived.I want to tell you this: we get all confused because we don’t know who assassinated him. I don’t believe that the Honorable Elijah Muhammad assassinated him. You believe whatever you want to, I do not believe it. And because we get confused about who assassinated him, we say there was never any good in Elijah Muhammad or the “Black Muslims.” I don’t believe that either. I believe that the basic truths that Malcolm X taught came from the basic philosophy and teachings of Elijah Muhammad. I believe that the basic contribution which he made, the basic philosophy which he taught, stems directly from the teachings of Elijah Muhammad and the “Black Muslims.” I do not accept all the teachings of Elijah Muhammad or the “Black Muslims,” but I understand what Malcolm X did to those teachings. He took the teachings of a cult, with all the mythology of the “Black Muslims,” and universalized them so that black people everywhere, no matter what their religion, could understand them and could accept them.I can accept the teachings which he abstracted from the cult philosophy and mythology of the Honorable Elijah Muhammad. I do not believe in the story about Yacub and creating the white man as the devil in 6,000 years, but that has nothing to do with the essential truth. I do not believe that the white man is the devil. He does devilish things, but I don’t believe that he is a devil. Because to say that he is a devil is to say that he is more than human, and I don’t believe that. You know that in the Christian religion the devil was flung out of heaven; he was an angel, he was more than a man, and to believe that the white man is a devil is to attribute to him supernatural powers. That is a cult mystique. There is nothing about the white man that is supernatural. He is just exactly like we are – that’s why we can understand him so well. There is nothing mysterious about what he does. He wasn’t condemned to be a devil for 6,000 years – he just acts like a devil because it suits his purpose, and he mistreats us, he oppresses us, he’s brutal to us, because it’s in his interest – not because he is a devil.It is closer to the truth to say that he is a beast, and that is what Malcolm said. You would like to forget that now, but every time I talked to him, he referred to the white man as a beast. And those of you who are white here will agree with him that most white people are beasts – you can’t deny it. On the basis of the way the white man has treated black men in America and throughout the world for 400 years, you cannot deny that he certainly had a truth there when he said that the white man is a beast. But not a devil. A beast is lower than a man, a devil is higher than a man. Certainly the white man is not a devil, but he is in many instances a beast.Malcolm was different when he was in the “Black Muslims.” You have got to remember that too – he had a power base then. You know, as quiet as it is kept, it is one thing to operate out of something, to talk out of something, to have something behind you when you go into a town or a city – to go knowing that there are people there who are preparing things for you. It is another thing to step out by yourself and try to go around the country without a power base, without any protection, without any organization in front. And that was the difference when Malcolm X stepped out of the Muslim movement and became an individual. Then he faced the harassment, the danger, the confusion and everything in these last years that those who want to distort Malcolm X want to make so much out of. At the beginning, when he was with the Muslims, there was a power base from which he operated, a philosophical foundation upon which he could build. And he built well and he operated well in terms of a power base. He abstracted the general truths that we still remember. And these things we have got to preserve – we have got to preserve, brothers, I’m telling you, we have got to preserve.We have a great tendency to turn our leaders over to somebody else. Who is the custodian of Malcolm’s tradition? Who is the custodian? (Voice from audience: “We are.”) But we aren’t acting like it. You know who the custodian is, don’t you? – there he sits, right there. If Mr. Breitman stopped writing, nobody would write anything. And he’s doing it in terms of what he believes is a proper interpretation. If we want to preserve our heroes, we have to become the custodians of that tradition. Who is the custodian of DuBois? Black people? No, we don’t have one thing that he wrote. The Communist Party has it, and they will let us read what they want us to read. I’m talking to you black brothers, I don’t care what the rest of these people think. We have got to become the custodians of our own heroes and save them and interpret them the way we want them interpreted. And if you don’t do it, then you have to accept what somebody else says they said. Who is the custodian of Paul Robeson? (Voice from audience: “The Communists.”) All right, we don’t have it. The great things he said, all of the things – where are they? The CIA has taken over perhaps all of the African Encyclopedia that DuBois was working on in Ghana. Nobody knows where it is. We don’t protect these things. We are careless and we get caught up in the myths that other people spin for us. In another five years our children won’t know what Malcolm X was really like. Because we won’t write it down, and everything that is written that they can put their hands on will be saying that Malcolm X said something he never said, that Malcolm X meant something he never meant.I say Malcolm X was tremendously important, beyond even our comprehension today, because Malcolm changed the whole course of the black man’s freedom struggle – the whole course of that freedom struggle not only in America but throughout the world. Black people everywhere in Africa, in the United States, everywhere, black people are fighting today a different battle than they fought before Malcolm began to talk. A different battle because Malcolm laid down certain basic principles that we can never forget. He changed the whole course. The first basic principle that Malcolm laid down that we can’t forget is this: The white man is your enemy. That is a basic principle, we can’t forget it. I don’t care what else they drag in from wherever they drag it – remember one thing, Malcolm X taught one truth: The white man is our enemy. We can’t get away from it, and if we accept and understand that one basic truth, his life was not lived in vain. Because upon that one basic truth we can build a total philosophy, a total course of action for struggle. Because that was the basic confusion which distorted the lives of black people, which corrupted the movements of black people. That was the basic area of our confusion, and Malcolm X straightened that out.The white man is an enemy – he said it. We must break our identification with him, and that was his basic contribution. He didn’t just say it, he didn’t sit off someplace and just write it – he went out and he lived it. He asked for moments of confrontation. He said we have got to break our identification, we can’t go through life identifying with the white man or his government. You remember what he said down there at King Solomon Baptist Church: You talk about “your” navy and “your” astronauts. He said forget it, we don’t identify with these people, they are the enemy. And that is the basic truth. We must break our identification with the enemy, we must confront him, and we must realize that conflict and violence are necessary parts of a struggle against an enemy – that is what he taught. Conflict, struggle and violence are not to be avoided. Don’t be afraid of them – you heard what he said. There has got to be some bloodshed, he said, if black men want to be free – that is what he taught. Now you can’t take that and say that he believed in blacks and whites marching together. He said black men have got to be willing to shed their blood because they believe that they can be free. The white man is an enemy.We must take pride in ourselves – you know that is what he said. But he didn’t make a mystique out of Africa. He didn’t sit down in a corner and contemplate his navel and think about the wonders of Africa. He said we have a history that we can be proud of. Africa is our history, African blood is our blood, African soil is our soil. We can take pride in our past – not by sitting down and contemplating it, but by using it as the basis for a course of action in today’s world, as a basis for confrontation with the enemy, as a basis for struggle, for conflict, and even for violence, if necessary. We fight because we are proud; and because we are proud, we are not going to lie down and crawl like snakes on our bellies. We are not going to take second-class citizenship sitting down, saying, “Well, in a few years maybe things will change.” We want to change it now. That is what Malcolm told us, that is what we believe, and that is the basis of our struggle today.A corollary of that, which you must understand and which is essentially Malcolm’s contribution, is that integration is impossible and undesirable. Integration is impossible – he said it time and time and time again, under all kinds of circumstances – integration is impossible and undesirable. Now this was harder for black people to take than for white people. Because white people never wanted it in the first place, and were determined that it would never come to pass in the second place. But black people had been led to believe that it was a possibility, always just around the corner. So black people had pegged all of their organizational efforts toward integration. We sang We Shall Overcome Someday, believing that overcoming meant integrating. The NAACP pegged its whole program on the possibilities of integration. We are going to build an integrated world, we are going to build a world in which black people and white people live together, we are going to build an integrated world – that is what Dr. Martin Luther King said. “I’ve got a dream for America tonight, a dream when the children of slaves shall walk hand-in-hand with the children of slavemasters.” And we believed it until Malcolm X told us it is a lie. And that is a genuine contribution – it is a lie.You will never walk hand-in-hand with anybody but black people, let me tell you. If you do, it is just a moment of mutual hypocrisy in which you are both engaged, for some purpose best known to yourselves. You may build a position of strength, a position of power from which you can negotiate with strength instead of weakness, and if you are willing to negotiate, then you can talk to the white man as an equal. That is as close to brotherhood as there is – there is no other brotherhood. If you talk to a man as an equal, he is your brother. But there is no other kind of equal. You cannot get down on your knees and talk up to a man and talk about brotherhood. Because you stopped being a brother when you got down on your knees. And if you are afraid to get up and look him in the eye and take a chance of getting killed if necessary, then there is no hope of brotherhood for you. Integration is impossible and undesirable – Malcolm taught it.We have our own communities. The white man “gave” them to us. He forced us into them. He separated himself from us. And white people went all around the country all the time Malcolm was alive, saying, “He wants separation.” They had separated themselves from us in every area of life, and yet they said, “He is bad, he is wicked, he wants separation.” And if he had asked for integration seriously, they would have killed him more quickly.He said we are going to control these separate communities. We have them, the white man “gave” them to us, and we are going to stop being ashamed of them. We are going to live in them and we are going to make them the best communities in the world. We are going to make the schools in them black schools and good schools. We are going to make our housing black housing and good housing. We are no longer going to believe that a block is no good till a white man comes and buys a house on it. We are no longer going to believe that if we can move into a community where half of the people on the street are white, that that is a better community. We are going to take our separate communities, we are going to work with them, we are going to control them, we are going to control their politics, we are going to control their economy – we are going to control our community.Malcolm X laid the entire foundation for everything Stokely Carmichael says. Stokely hasn’t said one word that was not completely implicit in everything that Malcolm X taught. He is just a voice carrying on upon the basic foundation that Malcolm X put down. Integration is impossible and undesirable. We are going to control our own communities. We are going to stop worrying about being separate. We are not worried about busing black children into white neighborhoods. We are not worried about open occupancy, except that we want the right to live any place, and unless we are given that right, we will take it. And when we take it, we will still live together, because we do not want to live with you. That is a philosophy, that is Malcolm X’s philosophy. We have learned it, we still remember it, and there is nothing you can do today to take it away from us. But I’m telling you, brothers, we have got to write it down because they are about to mess it up so we won’t recognize it next year.The whole civil rights movement has changed. The NAACP is washed up, through, finished. The Urban League is nothing but the social service agency it started out to be. The civil rights movement now is nothing but Stokely Carmichael and Floyd McKissick – that’s it. Because they got the message. They are building today on what Malcolm said yesterday. The civil rights movement, the freedom struggle, the revolution – call it what you will – black men fighting for freedom today are fighting in terms laid down by Brother Malcolm. No other terms. You can’t go out into the community – the brother here said “let’s go out into the community” – you can’t go out into the community with anything other than what Malcolm X taught. Because they won’t listen to you, they won’t hear you.The whole movement has changed. The last great picnic, as Floyd McKissick said, on the White House lawn, that “great freedom march” – that was the end, that was it. From here on in, black people are trying to build, to organize. Malcolm in his last days was trying to make the transition to organization, to structure; to fight not only in terms of words, of ideas, but to build the organizational structure. He didn’t do it. But he was making the transition because he realized that the next stage is an organizational stage – that if you want to be free, if you want power, you have got to organize to take it.When you were just begging the white man to give you something, you didn’t need organization. All you needed was a kneeling pad so that you could kneel down and look humble. But if you want power, you have got to organize to get it – you have got to have political power, you have got to have economic power, you have got to organize. Malcolm realized that, and the feeble beginnings he made in the area of organization were pointing the way. Today we have got to carry on that organizational struggle that Malcolm pointed out.I was in New York, I went to his headquarters while he was over in Africa, I talked with his lieutenants. They didn’t have the slightest idea of what was going on. They loved Malcolm, and they were sitting in the Hotel Theresa in a suite of rooms, but they didn’t have the slightest conception of how to organize. They were waiting for Brother Malcolm to come home so he could tell them what to do. I said, “My God, one man never carried such a load all by himself! He has men here who are supposed to be doing something and they are sitting there waiting for him to come back.” And they were carrying around his letters – he would write back a letter and they were carrying it around like it was the Bible: “Look, we’ve got a few words from Brother Malcolm.”He did not want reverence – he wanted people who could do something, who could organize, who believed in action, who were willing to go out and sacrifice; and he didn’t have them. And all of us today – black people, brothers from coast to coast – when we get together and do reverence to Malcolm, let us remember that the last message was organize. We didn’t do it and that is why he died. We didn’t have organization enough to protect him. We didn’t have organization enough to give him funds to do what he had to do. We let him die. The message is the same today, and still we are not organizing, we are not doing the work that has to be done. If you love Brother Malcolm, write your poems at night and organize and work in the daytime for power. Because until you get power, Malcolm X is just a memory. When we get power, we will put his statue in every city, because the cities will belong to us. Then we can do him reverence.But until we get power, let’s not play with images and myths. Let’s remember that he gave us certain principles, certain ideas, and we have got to do something with them. All of us have the task – to organize, to build, to fight, to get power. And as we get it, as we struggle for it, we will remember that we are struggling because we believe the things that he taught. That is the message of Malcolm, and don’t let anybody get you all mixed up. He never turned into an integrationist, never. He wasn’t fooled in Mecca, he wasn’t fooled in Africa. He told it like it was and he knew it like it was. That is our Malcolm. Some other folks may have another Malcolm – they are welcome to it. But brothers, don’t lose our Malcolm.

International Socialist Review, September-October 1967

Rev. Albert Cleage

Myths About Malcolm X:A Speech

Rev. Albert Cleage, chairman of the Detroit Inner City Organizing Committee, gave this speech at a memorial meeting for Malcolm X at the Friday Night Socialist Forum in Detroit, February 24, 1967.

You were very kind to ask me to be here.

I am not a Marxist – I don’t pretend to be, I don’t even pretend to know anything about it. I am a black man in a world dominated by white oppression, and that is my total philosophy. I would like to get rid of that oppression, and that is my total objective. So I bring to this occasion rather a simple approach – personal reflections on the significance of Malcolm X.I can remember a number of occasions when I talked to him, when I was with him, when I spoke on platforms with him; and so I am not indebted to printed material for my impressions of Malcolm X. I remember the last time he was in the city – not so much the speech, which was not one of his best by any means; it reflected, I think, much of the tension that he was under, much of the confusion, the constant living on the brink of violence. But I can remember him backstage, in the Gold Room I think they call it, of Ford Auditorium. Recently he had suffered smoke inhalation, the doctor had given him an injection, he was trying to sleep, he was irritable. But he was here because he had promised to be here, because he thought some people were concerned about what he had to say.I remember him at the King Solomon Baptist Church on one of the occasions he spoke there – sort of in concealment backstage, constantly harassed with the danger of assassination. And I can remember the occasion at the King Solomon Baptist Church when he gave the Message to the Grass Roots, which I think is his best speech, his most typical statement, and which I personally think is his last will and testament. I remember him, I talked to him, I agreed with him. He was a Muslim, I am a Christian, and yet I can think of no basic matter upon which we disagreed.Two years after his death Brother Malcolm is more important to more people than he was at any time during his lifetime. I think this is true. Young people who never saw him, who never heard him, speak of him with reverence and say, “I love Malcolm.” This is atremendous thing. Older people who heard and saw him select from the things they heard and saw the things they want to remember, or even the things it suits their purpose to remember. This too is quite a thing – that an individual should be important enough to be remembered even with distortions or for reasons not quite only of love.Brother Malcolm has become a symbol, a dream, a hope, a nostalgia for the past, a mystique, a shadow sometimes without substance, “our shining black prince,” to whom we do obeisance, about whom we write heroic poems. But I think Brother Malcolm the man is in danger of being lost in a vast tissue of distortions which now constitute the Malcolm myth. The Malcolm myth or the Malcolm myths, the complex of myths which more and more tend to cluster about Brother Malcolm, remind us of what happened to Jesus Christ. I think I understand much more now the things that are written and said about Jesus, because I can understand how the life of a man dedicated to people can so easily become a focal point for the things people want to make that life mean.The Malcolm myth or myths depend for substance upon the last chaotic and confusing year or two of his life – fragmentary statements growing out of his trip to Mecca and his efforts to bring the problems of black people in America to the attention of African leaders. Out of this period of his life comes the confusing complex of myths. According to the myth, his pilgrimage to Mecca turned Brother Malcolm into an integrationist. I’ve heard that seriously stated by people who claim to be scholars and students of the life of Brother Malcolm. In Mecca, they say, he saw blue-eyed whites and blacks worshipping and living together, in love, for the first time in his 39 years – and his whole concept of white people changed. This is the myth. And he rejected his former position that the white man is the enemy and that separation is inescapable. This is the myth.The implication here is that this new insight changed his orientation; that with this new insight he was now free to join the NAACP, or to sing We Shall Overcome with Martin Luther King, or to become a Marxist and join the Socialist Workers Party. And certainly, if we accept this basic myth as being true, as being fact, if his experience in Mecca changed his conception of white people, then all the implications certainly follow logically. If in terms of his experience in Mecca he came to believe that there is no enmity between black and white, that blacks and whites can march together in unity and brotherhood, then why shouldn’t he join the NAACP, or sing We Shall Overcome, or become a Marxist in the Socialist Workers Party?I say that is the myth, and from my personal point of view, realizing that we are in the position of the blind man who inspected the elephant and tried to describe what an elephant is, I say I do not believe this myth. I reject it completely, totally and absolutely. I say if Malcolm X, Brother Malcolm, had undergone this kind of transformation, if in Mecca he had decided that blacks and whites can unite, then his life at that moment would have become meaningless in terms of the world struggle of black people, and we would not have any occasion to be here this evening. So I say I do not believe it.Brother Malcolm knew history and he was guided by his interpretation of history. He interpreted the things that happened to him in terms of his knowledge and his understanding of the past. He would not have been taken in by what happened in Mecca. Brother Malcolm knew that the Arab Muslims had been the backbone of the slave trade. Those of you who have a sentimental attachment to the “Black Muslims” in America, or the Muslims that happen to be black, might not like to remember that the slave trade with black Africans in Africa was fostered, encouraged and carried on by the Arab Muslims in Africa. Brother Malcolm knew this. He would not have been taken in by the window dressing in Mecca. He would not have forgotten this important fact – that blacks and whites do not unite above the basic fact of race, of color. He would not have forgotten this in Mecca any more than in New York or Chicago or San Francisco. He knew that in Saudi Arabia they are still selling black Africans into slavery, they still make forays into Black Africa and bring back black slaves for sale in Arab Muslim countries. Brother Malcolm knew this. And to me it is preposterous to say that in Mecca he became an integrationist.Also, according to the myth, Brother Malcolm tried to internationalize the black man’s struggle in America. Certainly he brought the black man’s struggle to the attention of African leaders. The implication is that Brother Malcolm felt that the black man in Africa could help us through the United Nations and that we would be better off before the white man’s World Court than before the white man’s Supreme Court. I do not believe it. Malcolm knew that one cracker court is just like another cracker court. He knew it, I know it and you know it. And to say now that he came to the conclusion that, if he could get the black man’s problem in America before the World Court, it would somehow mysteriously be changed and transformed is ridiculous. To take it before the World Court would have been interesting – but certainly no solution. We are no more apt to get justice before the World Court than before the Recorder’s Court downtown here in the city of Detroit. Crackers run both of them.Don’t be afraid, brothers, don’t be afraid – I am not hurting the image of Malcolm. I am just’trying to save it, because you are about to lose it, you are about to forget what Malcolm said. By taking the last moments of confusion, when he was getting ready to be assassinated, and saying that the confused little statements he made in those last moments were his life – that’s a lie, that wasn’t his life. I heard him, I talked to him, I know what his life was, and he understood the relationship between blacks and whites.Certainly Brother Malcolm wanted to relate our struggle, the struggle of black people in America, to the struggle of black people everywhere. I say to the struggle of black people everywhere, becausethat is a struggle that he understood, that I understand and that you understand. I am not talking about relating it to the struggle of oppressed people everywhere, but relating it to the struggle of black people everywhere. But he expected little help from the Africans and the African nations. Malcolm wasn’t running around Africa thinking that the African nations were going to free us. Malcolm wasn’t that kind of an idiotic idealist. He went to our black brothers because they were our brothers. He talked to them about our problems because their problems are our problems, and we are as concerned about their problems as we want them to be about our problems. But he didn’t go to Africa expecting them to free us.Sometimes we forget that, and we sit around waiting for somebody in Africa to send somebody over here to free us – “like Malcolm said they were going to.” He never said it and they are never going to do it. If you are going to be free, you are going to free yourself, and that is what Malcolm told us. The African nations can’t free us, they can’t save us. They couldn’t save Lumumba in Africa, they couldn’t wreak vengeance upon those who perpetrated his death in Africa. They couldn’t save the Congo; they couldn’t save the black people of Rhodesia; they couldn’t free the black people of South Africa. Then why should we sit here in our own oppression, our own suffering, our own brutality, waiting for some mysterious transformation when black armies from Africa are coming over here and free us? They could use some black armies from over here to free them.Malcolm never said it, and don’t be misled by the statement that Malcolm tried to internationalize the black man’s struggle. He tried to tell us quite simply that the white man has given you hell here in the United States and he is giving black men hell all over the world. It is one struggle – black men fighting for freedom everywhere, in every country, in the United States, in Africa, in Vietnam, everywhere. Black men fighting against white men for freedom. He tried to tell you that the white man is not going to free you. I don’t care what persuasion or philosophy he has, he is not going to free you, because if he frees you, he must take something away from himself to give it to you.Funny how we can so easily forget what Malcolm said. I don’t believe it. Certainly he wanted to relate it to the black man’s struggle throughout the world. He knew we were struggling against the same enemy. He knew that we could expect no more justice from the World Court than from a Supreme Court. So much for the Malcolm myth.Brother Malcolm’s contribution is tremendous. What Brother Malcolm contributed to the black man’s struggle in America and throughout the world cannot be equaled or surpassed by the life of any man. Oh, we can think of individuals like Marcus Garvey. When he looked at the world and said, “Where is the black man’s government?” it was tremendous. Because he understood that the black man was engaged in a struggle against an enemy, and that if he was engagedin a struggle there were certain things that were necessary – he had to have power, he had to have a government, he had to have economies, he had to have certain things. Marcus Garvey understood it. But no man surpasses Malcolm in his understanding of the meaning of the struggle in which black people are engaged everywhere in the world. And there was no subterfuge or confusion or weak-kneed pussyfooting in Malcolm as long as he lived.I want to tell you this: we get all confused because we don’t know who assassinated him. I don’t believe that the Honorable Elijah Muhammad assassinated him. You believe whatever you want to, I do not believe it. And because we get confused about who assassinated him, we say there was never any good in Elijah Muhammad or the “Black Muslims.” I don’t believe that either. I believe that the basic truths that Malcolm X taught came from the basic philosophy and teachings of Elijah Muhammad. I believe that the basic contribution which he made, the basic philosophy which he taught, stems directly from the teachings of Elijah Muhammad and the “Black Muslims.” I do not accept all the teachings of Elijah Muhammad or the “Black Muslims,” but I understand what Malcolm X did to those teachings. He took the teachings of a cult, with all the mythology of the “Black Muslims,” and universalized them so that black people everywhere, no matter what their religion, could understand them and could accept them.I can accept the teachings which he abstracted from the cult philosophy and mythology of the Honorable Elijah Muhammad. I do not believe in the story about Yacub and creating the white man as the devil in 6,000 years, but that has nothing to do with the essential truth. I do not believe that the white man is the devil. He does devilish things, but I don’t believe that he is a devil. Because to say that he is a devil is to say that he is more than human, and I don’t believe that. You know that in the Christian religion the devil was flung out of heaven; he was an angel, he was more than a man, and to believe that the white man is a devil is to attribute to him supernatural powers. That is a cult mystique. There is nothing about the white man that is supernatural. He is just exactly like we are – that’s why we can understand him so well. There is nothing mysterious about what he does. He wasn’t condemned to be a devil for 6,000 years – he just acts like a devil because it suits his purpose, and he mistreats us, he oppresses us, he’s brutal to us, because it’s in his interest – not because he is a devil.It is closer to the truth to say that he is a beast, and that is what Malcolm said. You would like to forget that now, but every time I talked to him, he referred to the white man as a beast. And those of you who are white here will agree with him that most white people are beasts – you can’t deny it. On the basis of the way the white man has treated black men in America and throughout the world for 400 years, you cannot deny that he certainly had a truth there when he said that the white man is a beast. But not a devil. A beast is lower than a man, a devil is higher than a man. Certainly the white man is not a devil, but he is in many instances a beast.Malcolm was different when he was in the “Black Muslims.” You have got to remember that too – he had a power base then. You know, as quiet as it is kept, it is one thing to operate out of something, to talk out of something, to have something behind you when you go into a town or a city – to go knowing that there are people there who are preparing things for you. It is another thing to step out by yourself and try to go around the country without a power base, without any protection, without any organization in front. And that was the difference when Malcolm X stepped out of the Muslim movement and became an individual. Then he faced the harassment, the danger, the confusion and everything in these last years that those who want to distort Malcolm X want to make so much out of. At the beginning, when he was with the Muslims, there was a power base from which he operated, a philosophical foundation upon which he could build. And he built well and he operated well in terms of a power base. He abstracted the general truths that we still remember. And these things we have got to preserve – we have got to preserve, brothers, I’m telling you, we have got to preserve.We have a great tendency to turn our leaders over to somebody else. Who is the custodian of Malcolm’s tradition? Who is the custodian? (Voice from audience: “We are.”) But we aren’t acting like it. You know who the custodian is, don’t you? – there he sits, right there. If Mr. Breitman stopped writing, nobody would write anything. And he’s doing it in terms of what he believes is a proper interpretation. If we want to preserve our heroes, we have to become the custodians of that tradition. Who is the custodian of DuBois? Black people? No, we don’t have one thing that he wrote. The Communist Party has it, and they will let us read what they want us to read. I’m talking to you black brothers, I don’t care what the rest of these people think. We have got to become the custodians of our own heroes and save them and interpret them the way we want them interpreted. And if you don’t do it, then you have to accept what somebody else says they said. Who is the custodian of Paul Robeson? (Voice from audience: “The Communists.”) All right, we don’t have it. The great things he said, all of the things – where are they? The CIA has taken over perhaps all of the African Encyclopedia that DuBois was working on in Ghana. Nobody knows where it is. We don’t protect these things. We are careless and we get caught up in the myths that other people spin for us. In another five years our children won’t know what Malcolm X was really like. Because we won’t write it down, and everything that is written that they can put their hands on will be saying that Malcolm X said something he never said, that Malcolm X meant something he never meant.I say Malcolm X was tremendously important, beyond even our comprehension today, because Malcolm changed the whole course of the black man’s freedom struggle – the whole course of that freedom struggle not only in America but throughout the world. Black people everywhere in Africa, in the United States, everywhere, black people are fighting today a different battle than they fought before Malcolm began to talk. A different battle because Malcolm laid down certain basic principles that we can never forget. He changed the whole course. The first basic principle that Malcolm laid down that we can’t forget is this: The white man is your enemy. That is a basic principle, we can’t forget it. I don’t care what else they drag in from wherever they drag it – remember one thing, Malcolm X taught one truth: The white man is our enemy. We can’t get away from it, and if we accept and understand that one basic truth, his life was not lived in vain. Because upon that one basic truth we can build a total philosophy, a total course of action for struggle. Because that was the basic confusion which distorted the lives of black people, which corrupted the movements of black people. That was the basic area of our confusion, and Malcolm X straightened that out.The white man is an enemy – he said it. We must break our identification with him, and that was his basic contribution. He didn’t just say it, he didn’t sit off someplace and just write it – he went out and he lived it. He asked for moments of confrontation. He said we have got to break our identification, we can’t go through life identifying with the white man or his government. You remember what he said down there at King Solomon Baptist Church: You talk about “your” navy and “your” astronauts. He said forget it, we don’t identify with these people, they are the enemy. And that is the basic truth. We must break our identification with the enemy, we must confront him, and we must realize that conflict and violence are necessary parts of a struggle against an enemy – that is what he taught. Conflict, struggle and violence are not to be avoided. Don’t be afraid of them – you heard what he said. There has got to be some bloodshed, he said, if black men want to be free – that is what he taught. Now you can’t take that and say that he believed in blacks and whites marching together. He said black men have got to be willing to shed their blood because they believe that they can be free. The white man is an enemy.We must take pride in ourselves – you know that is what he said. But he didn’t make a mystique out of Africa. He didn’t sit down in a corner and contemplate his navel and think about the wonders of Africa. He said we have a history that we can be proud of. Africa is our history, African blood is our blood, African soil is our soil. We can take pride in our past – not by sitting down and contemplating it, but by using it as the basis for a course of action in today’s world, as a basis for confrontation with the enemy, as a basis for struggle, for conflict, and even for violence, if necessary. We fight because we are proud; and because we are proud, we are not going to lie down and crawl like snakes on our bellies. We are not going to take second-class citizenship sitting down, saying, “Well, in a few years maybe things will change.” We want to change it now. That is what Malcolm told us, that is what we believe, and that is the basis of our struggle today.A corollary of that, which you must understand and which is essentially Malcolm’s contribution, is that integration is impossible and undesirable. Integration is impossible – he said it time and time and time again, under all kinds of circumstances – integration is impossible and undesirable. Now this was harder for black people to take than for white people. Because white people never wanted it in the first place, and were determined that it would never come to pass in the second place. But black people had been led to believe that it was a possibility, always just around the corner. So black people had pegged all of their organizational efforts toward integration. We sang We Shall Overcome Someday, believing that overcoming meant integrating. The NAACP pegged its whole program on the possibilities of integration. We are going to build an integrated world, we are going to build a world in which black people and white people live together, we are going to build an integrated world – that is what Dr. Martin Luther King said. “I’ve got a dream for America tonight, a dream when the children of slaves shall walk hand-in-hand with the children of slavemasters.” And we believed it until Malcolm X told us it is a lie. And that is a genuine contribution – it is a lie.You will never walk hand-in-hand with anybody but black people, let me tell you. If you do, it is just a moment of mutual hypocrisy in which you are both engaged, for some purpose best known to yourselves. You may build a position of strength, a position of power from which you can negotiate with strength instead of weakness, and if you are willing to negotiate, then you can talk to the white man as an equal. That is as close to brotherhood as there is – there is no other brotherhood. If you talk to a man as an equal, he is your brother. But there is no other kind of equal. You cannot get down on your knees and talk up to a man and talk about brotherhood. Because you stopped being a brother when you got down on your knees. And if you are afraid to get up and look him in the eye and take a chance of getting killed if necessary, then there is no hope of brotherhood for you. Integration is impossible and undesirable – Malcolm taught it.We have our own communities. The white man “gave” them to us. He forced us into them. He separated himself from us. And white people went all around the country all the time Malcolm was alive, saying, “He wants separation.” They had separated themselves from us in every area of life, and yet they said, “He is bad, he is wicked, he wants separation.” And if he had asked for integration seriously, they would have killed him more quickly.He said we are going to control these separate communities. We have them, the white man “gave” them to us, and we are going to stop being ashamed of them. We are going to live in them and we are going to make them the best communities in the world. We are going to make the schools in them black schools and good schools. We are going to make our housing black housing and good housing. We are no longer going to believe that a block is no good till a white man comes and buys a house on it. We are no longer going to believe that if we can move into a community where half of the people on the street are white, that that is a better community. We are going to take our separate communities, we are going to work with them, we are going to control them, we are going to control their politics, we are going to control their economy – we are going to control our community.Malcolm X laid the entire foundation for everything Stokely Carmichael says. Stokely hasn’t said one word that was not completely implicit in everything that Malcolm X taught. He is just a voice carrying on upon the basic foundation that Malcolm X put down. Integration is impossible and undesirable. We are going to control our own communities. We are going to stop worrying about being separate. We are not worried about busing black children into white neighborhoods. We are not worried about open occupancy, except that we want the right to live any place, and unless we are given that right, we will take it. And when we take it, we will still live together, because we do not want to live with you. That is a philosophy, that is Malcolm X’s philosophy. We have learned it, we still remember it, and there is nothing you can do today to take it away from us. But I’m telling you, brothers, we have got to write it down because they are about to mess it up so we won’t recognize it next year.The whole civil rights movement has changed. The NAACP is washed up, through, finished. The Urban League is nothing but the social service agency it started out to be. The civil rights movement now is nothing but Stokely Carmichael and Floyd McKissick – that’s it. Because they got the message. They are building today on what Malcolm said yesterday. The civil rights movement, the freedom struggle, the revolution – call it what you will – black men fighting for freedom today are fighting in terms laid down by Brother Malcolm. No other terms. You can’t go out into the community – the brother here said “let’s go out into the community” – you can’t go out into the community with anything other than what Malcolm X taught. Because they won’t listen to you, they won’t hear you.The whole movement has changed. The last great picnic, as Floyd McKissick said, on the White House lawn, that “great freedom march” – that was the end, that was it. From here on in, black people are trying to build, to organize. Malcolm in his last days was trying to make the transition to organization, to structure; to fight not only in terms of words, of ideas, but to build the organizational structure. He didn’t do it. But he was making the transition because he realized that the next stage is an organizational stage – that if you want to be free, if you want power, you have got to organize to take it.When you were just begging the white man to give you something, you didn’t need organization. All you needed was a kneeling pad so that you could kneel down and look humble. But if you want power, you have got to organize to get it – you have got to have political power, you have got to have economic power, you have got to organize. Malcolm realized that, and the feeble beginnings he made in the area of organization were pointing the way. Today we have got to carry on that organizational struggle that Malcolm pointed out.I was in New York, I went to his headquarters while he was over in Africa, I talked with his lieutenants. They didn’t have the slightest idea of what was going on. They loved Malcolm, and they were sitting in the Hotel Theresa in a suite of rooms, but they didn’t have the slightest conception of how to organize. They were waiting for Brother Malcolm to come home so he could tell them what to do. I said, “My God, one man never carried such a load all by himself! He has men here who are supposed to be doing something and they are sitting there waiting for him to come back.” And they were carrying around his letters – he would write back a letter and they were carrying it around like it was the Bible: “Look, we’ve got a few words from Brother Malcolm.”He did not want reverence – he wanted people who could do something, who could organize, who believed in action, who were willing to go out and sacrifice; and he didn’t have them. And all of us today – black people, brothers from coast to coast – when we get together and do reverence to Malcolm, let us remember that the last message was organize. We didn’t do it and that is why he died. We didn’t have organization enough to protect him. We didn’t have organization enough to give him funds to do what he had to do. We let him die. The message is the same today, and still we are not organizing, we are not doing the work that has to be done. If you love Brother Malcolm, write your poems at night and organize and work in the daytime for power. Because until you get power, Malcolm X is just a memory. When we get power, we will put his statue in every city, because the cities will belong to us. Then we can do him reverence.But until we get power, let’s not play with images and myths. Let’s remember that he gave us certain principles, certain ideas, and we have got to do something with them. All of us have the task – to organize, to build, to fight, to get power. And as we get it, as we struggle for it, we will remember that we are struggling because we believe the things that he taught. That is the message of Malcolm, and don’t let anybody get you all mixed up. He never turned into an integrationist, never. He wasn’t fooled in Mecca, he wasn’t fooled in Africa. He told it like it was and he knew it like it was. That is our Malcolm. Some other folks may have another Malcolm – they are welcome to it. But brothers, don’t lose our Malcolm.

Malcolm X was an African-American Muslim minister famous for his outspoken stile of public speaking on civil rights. Always controversial, many saw him as a hero who courageously fought against the crimes of white America against African Americans, while others saw him as an advocate of racism, black supremacy and violence. This is an excerpt from a speech given by Malcolm X on the 13th May, 1964 at the University of Ghana;

I intend for my talk to be very informal, because our position in America is an informal position, [Laughter] and I find that it is very difficult to use formal terms to describe a very informal position. No condition of any people on earth is more deplorable than the condition, or plight, of the twenty-two million Black people in America. And our condition is so deplorable because we are in a country that professes to be a democracy and professes to be striving to give justice and freedom and equality to everyone who is born under its constitution.

If we were born in South Africa or in Angola or some part of this earth where they don’t profess to be for freedom, that would be another thing; but when we are born in a country that stands up and represents itself as the leader of the Free World, and you still have to beg and crawl just to get a chance to drink a cup of coffee, then the condition is very deplorable indeed.

‘A victim of Americanism’

So tonight, so that you will understand me and why I speak as I do, it should probably be pointed out at the outset that I am not a politician. I don’t know anything about politics. I’m from America but I’m not an American. I didn’t go there of my own free choice. [Applause] If I were an American there would be no problem, there’d be no need for legislation or civil rights or anything else.

So I just try to face the fact as it actually is and come to this meeting as one of the victims of America, one of the victims of Americanism, one of the victims of democracy, one of the victims of a very hypocritical system that is going all over this earth today representing itself as being qualified to tell other people how to run their country when they can’t get the dirty things that are going on in their own country straightened out. [Applause]

So if someone else from America comes to you to speak, they’re probably speaking as Americans, and they speak as people who see America through the eyes of an American. And usually those types of persons refer to America, or that which exists in America, as the American Dream. But for the twenty million of us in America who are of African descent, it is not an American dream; it’s an American nightmare. [Laughter]

I don’t feel that I am a visitor in Ghana or in any part of Africa. I feel that I am at home. I’ve been away for four hundred years, [Laughter] but not of my own volition, not of my own will. Our people didn’t go to America on the Queen Mary, we didn’t go by Pan American, and we didn’t go to America on the Mayflower. We went in slave ships, we went in chains. We weren’t immigrants to America, we were cargo for purposes of a system that was bent upon making a profit. So this is the category or level of which I speak. I may not speak it in the language many of you would use, but I think you will understand the meaning of my terms.

When I was in Ibadan [in Nigeria] at the University of Ibadan last Friday night, the students there gave me a new name, which I go for—meaning I like it. [Laughter] Omowale, which they say means in Yoruba—if I am pronouncing that correctly, and if I am not pronouncing it correctly it’s because I haven’t had a chance to pronounce it for four hundred years [Laughter]—which means in that dialect, The child has returned.

It was an honor for me to be referred to as a child who had sense enough to return to the land of his forefathers—to his fatherland and to his motherland. Not sent back here by the State Department, [Laughter] but come back here of my own free will. [Applause]

I am happy and I imagine, since it is the policy that whenever a Black man leaves America and travels in any part of Africa, or Asia, or Latin America and says things contrary to what the American propaganda machine turns out, usually he finds upon his return home that his passport is lifted. Well, if they had not wanted me to say the things I am saying, they should never have given me a passport in the first place. The policy usually is the lifting of the passport. Now I am not here to condemn America, I am not here to make America look bad, but I am here to tell you the truth about the situation that Black people in America find themselves confronted with. And if truth condemns America, then she stands condemned. [Applause]

This is the most beautiful continent that I’ve ever seen; it’s the richest continent I’ve ever seen, and strange as it may seem, I find many white Americans here smiling in the faces of our African brothers like they have been loving them all of the time. [Laughter and applause]

The use of Skin bleaching creams or serums containing hydroquinone will actually damage your skin over time. Believe it or not I have seen many sista’s with skin problems get worse with long use of hydroquinone, it may actually darken your skin in the long run.

Check out the possible long term effects of using Hydroquinone skin bleach in the video below:

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1 Response to “The Dangers of Hydroquinone”

1 | Suzan
April 22, 2009 at 11:14 am

Can you please let me know whether you have a distributor of Makali products in UK?

I have just read about it and would like to try.

|Many thanks.

Reply

2 | Yeye Akilimali Funua Olade
May 5, 2009 at 5:12 pm

Your comment is awaiting moderation.

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BLACK ON SISTER FOR PUTING THIS INFO OUT!
“BLACK IS BEAUTIFUL!”
yeyeolade.wordpress.com

[Editor’s note: The following text is excerpted from “A Torchlight for America,” written by the Honorable Minister Louis Farrakhan, 1993.]
In The Name of Allah, The Beneficent, The Merciful.

Minister Louis Farrakhan
Unfortunately, the truth of the real condition of America is kept hidden from the people until conditions become so intolerable that the most uninformed of the people readily sees that something is wrong. Then, scapegoating becomes a necessary tool used by wickedly wise policy-makers and business leadership to re-direct and focus attention away from their own misdeeds and onto someone who is defenseless in the society.

A scapegoat is a person, group or thing upon whom the blame for the mistakes or crimes of others is thrust. According to the Bible, in the Book of Leviticus, the word scapegoat comes from the use of a goat, over whose head the high priest of the ancient Jews confessed the sins of the people on the Day of Atonement, after which the goat was allowed to escape. (Leviticus 16:8, 10, 26, 30)

The Honorable Elijah Muhammad taught us that when the door to the raw materials of Asia, Africa and Latin America closes to imperialistic design, the standard of living in America will decline. Those doors are now closing, and the American people are beginning to suffer as a result.

Asia, Africa and Latin America have been the playground for America’s economic and leisure purposes. Now that America’s ability to extract raw materials from these countries and compete against their products in the global economy has declined, America’s standard of living is on the decline. No relief is in sight for America’s annual trade deficit of over $100 billion. Labor and other operational costs here make American products more expensive to sell abroad and in many cases even more expensive to sell right at home.

As a result, America buys more from foreign countries, particularly Japan and eastern Europe, than she sells to foreign countries. The door to the world is closing and America is not competing well in the global economy. Thus the American standard of living is going down.

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If the American people truly knew their condition and trusted their leadership, they would be willing to take the proper medicine—no matter how bad it would taste—if that medicine would correct the condition. The political leadership has lied about the condition of the country. Some have said that the economy is on the upswing, while we are living in a decline.
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Black people are being positioned by the wickedly wise as the cause of the country’s ruin. The scapegoating of the poor sets the climate in America against the American labor class, against the underprivileged, and against Black people. There is now a pervasive anti-Black attitude. The media feeds this plan of scapegoating Black people by portraying us a useless and criminal.

Instead of looking honestly at the problem and coming up with solutions that would give America a future, the leadership lies to the American people and scapegoats the poor and the defenseless for the misdeeds of the American government.

If the American people truly knew their condition and trusted their leadership, they would be willing to take the proper medicine—no matter how bad it would taste—if that medicine would correct the condition. The political leadership has lied about the condition of the country. Some have said that the economy is on the upswing, while we are living in a decline.

If a doctor said you were fine while you were severely ill, and that doctor would not prescribe the proper medicine for your illness, that doctor could be charged and maybe found guilty of malpractice. Well, what about politicians and their unwillingness to prescribe real solutions to the country’s problems?

How did America in the past 12 years go from a leading creditor nation to the leading debtor nation? Where was the money borrowed from and to whom is the money owed?

The American taxpayer is now a slave to servicing a skyrocketing debt; a debt that is so large that it sentences future generations to the same servitude to this debt because the politicians are not courageous enough to deal honestly with this problem and present the American people with a real solution.

It’s dangerous to enslave a people and be the perpetual source of opposition to truth, which is the means for freeing the people from ignorance, yet say you believe in God. God has always come to the aid of the oppressed and the enslaved fighting against the rich and the powerful when they deprive others of the basic essentials of life, which are freedom, justice and equality that which is said to constitute the base of this country.

A Torrchlight for America by
The Honorable Minister Louis Farrakhan
Click here to Order
When the slaves were enamored with the riches of Pharaoh, Moses was not able to get his people to listen until he prayed for God’s hand to be set against the wealth of Egypt. (Holy Qur’an, Surah 10, Section 9) The more Egypt declined, the more the slaves were inclined to listen to Moses and get up and go for self.

God has always chosen from among the despised and rejected. Whenever there has been a master and a slave, God has always put the solution in the head of slaves. But if America has no respect for human life, or for those who are its former slaves, then America will miss the solution to its problems.

In the Book of Esther in the Bible, there is a prince, Haman, who had prepared a plot to destroy the Jewish people in what was known at that time as the land of Persia. Haman harbored animosity toward the Jews because they did not look upon him with reverence. As a result of his animosity, Haman began to spread rumors about the Jews and misrepresented them as lawless and disrespectful of the king. He proposed to the king that the Jews were worthy of death, “…all Jews, both young and old, little children and women, in one day…and to take the spoil of them for a prey,” because of their so-called disrespect for the king’s law. (Esther 3:13)

The King, Ahasuerus, who had exalted Haman above all other princes, was therefore receptive to Haman’s unjust plot to destroy the Jews. A decree was issued and all Jews were sentenced to death.

However, Queen Esther uncovered the plot. Risking her own life, she approached the king to petition on behalf of the Jews. In this instance, the king was not a sexist. Though the voice on behalf of the Jews was a woman, he listened to her petition, weighed the evidence and determined to spare the Jews. Because the king heeded Queen Esther’s warning, he ceased the plot that would have caused unjust death to be visited upon the Jewish people, thereby sparing himself and his country from the wrath of God. If he had been inclined toward sexism, he would have rejected her warning, and he would have sentenced himself and his people to the chastisement of God.

Sexism is sinking the country. Classism is sinking the country. Racism is sinking the country. White supremacy is sinking the country. Black inferiority and a slave mentality are sinking the country.

We must be open to truth, no matter from whom it is spoken, because the ultimate source of all truth is Allah (God). The Honorable Elijah Muhammad taught about those of us who are used to eating from a gold bowl, that if truth doesn’t come to you in a gold bowl, but rather in an old pot, and you refuse it because it’s not in your customary vessel, then your arrogance and foolishness will deprive you of the light that can free you of your condition, and you will ultimately be led to your destruction by your own arrogance.

God has chosen from among the former slaves, the Blacks. He has put in the head of the Honorable Elijah Muhammad and in the heads of us who follow him, a light; a torchlight that shows the way out of America’s worsening conditions, for Blacks and for all of America. But America’s treatment of us and America’s treatment of the Honorable Elijah Muhammad is like the treatment of Daniel by the proud kings of Babylon. It’s terrible that some of those with power and influence label me a “Hitler,” a racist or a hater, so that they can justify their own people, or agents among our people, in attempts to defame and otherwise harm me. This is hiding the light. This is scapegoating.

***

The reason leaders desire to hide the truth is to keep the people blind and powerless so that the rich can engage unhindered in feeding their own greed. They don’t desire to live in a free society, a just society, and an equal society for all of the country’s people. They are rebels against God. As Jesus said, “Ye are of your father the devil, and the lusts of your father ye will do. He was a murderer in the beginning, and abode not in the truth…” (John 8:44)

Any man who will not speak or abide in the truth is a murderer of the human spirit and the law of liberty, for only truth gives us true liberty. This is why it is written that “it is easier for a camel to go through the eye of a needle, than for a rich man to enter into the kingdom of God.” (Matthew 19:24) The rich are unwilling to really sacrifice to lift the poor because of their basic greed and immorality. Therefore, the rich today are in trouble. Speaking of the rich, in the Book of James (5:1-6) it reads:

“Go to now, ye rich men, weep and howl for your miseries that shall come upon you. Your riches are corrupted, and your garments are moth-eaten. Your gold and silver is cankered; and the rust of them shall be a witness against you, and shall eat your flesh as it were fire. Ye have heaped treasure together for the last days. Behold, the hire of the labourers who have reaped down your fields , which is of you kept back by fraud, crieth: and the cries of them which have reaped are entered into the ears of the Lord of sabaoth. Ye have lived in pleasure on the earth, and been wanton; ye have nourished your hearts, as in a day of slaughter. Ye have condemned and killed the just; and he doth not resist you.”

As it was in the days of Jesus, so it is today. The rich have been found wanton and wanting, and God’s judgment is upon them in America.

The poor have no voice
Hiding The Light; America’s Economic Condition
The Fall of the Dollar
The Good Samaritan; A study of Cuba
Correct the Wrong
How To Protect a Democracy
Prophet Muhammad and the Holy Qur’an
The United States Draft: Will you answer the call?
The Promised Land
Farrakhan challenges the hip hop community
TRUTH: The Principle of Organization
The War of Armageddon
Minister Farrakhan’s Message to Zimbabwe
The Birth of the African Union
America Kindles God’s Anger, Wrath
A Special Message to Street Organizations

Text Comments (3450)
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justice4all (1 minute ago) Show Hide Marked as spam 0 Reply do u understand what u r sayin malcolm x is nothing like the clan, the clan killed blacks for no reason other than the colour of their skin. Malcolm only preached self – defence against rascist attacks cause the police and the courts were on the same side as the clan. Check your history
Arnan84 (2 minutes ago) Show Hide Marked as spam 0 Reply Evil white guys kidnapped his people.

Boo fricken hoo.

The paradise that is africa beckons you home scumbag.
lidoolsakura (14 minutes ago) Show Hide Marked as spam 0 Reply u sed it
jacktharippares (15 minutes ago) Show Hide Marked as spam 0 Reply wow i never knew that there are so many racists here on youtube , jeeez people are sick! we are all people that have to treat eachother with respect, this is 2008 for crying out loud !!!! and to EnriqueChavezValdes that said something stupid here , i say go and get a life you redneck racist!
JediBlake (26 minutes ago) Show Hide Marked as spam 0 Reply Ignorant comments around here, He was not a Black nationalist when he died, Because he had been to mecca and said that he saw everyone as simply HUMAN. look it up. No black/white/yellow, All HUMAN. =)
churkov (39 minutes ago) Show Hide Marked as spam 0 Reply POSTAGE678, you make me laugh, ranting about the filthy society in which you live. Blacks have made it so. Have you listened to rap recently? Seen the videos? Read the news regarding the gang slaughters,rapes, drug dealer, murders setc,etc,etc? Watch any police video and the skin colour id ALWAYS the same, and it aint white. Don’t blame honky for ‘making you poor’. There are many poor in Europe, but we don’t have your Amreican problems (but it’s growing in high ratio black areas).
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EnriqueChavezValdes (47 minutes ago) Show Hide Marked as spam 0 Reply Dammit get all this fucking nigger-loving shit off youtube.
TruthExplorer77 (50 minutes ago) Show Hide Marked as spam 0 Reply The Kidnapped Black people of Africa and the whole world need to hear this and do some thinking about this.
But he shows nothing of a greater understanding and i get the impression that if the tables were turned he would kidnapped whites or Chinese and done the same and maybe something worse.
Black, white, yellow, brown, green and all the kind of racism is not THE WAY, its simply a dead end.
Iranali786 (54 minutes ago) Show Hide Marked as spam 0 Reply Malcolm was a great Nationalist leader once , in the mid fifties , and the similarities between him and King Jr. are compelling. However , he converted to Islam , and one of his first disciples was Muhammad Ali ( Cassius Clay ).

However , I personally regard him as a ” Black Fascist ” , or rather , a Black version of the Ku Klux Klan – with beatings , lynchings , arson and shooting aginst innocent White people.
GayRum (1 hour ago) Show Hide Marked as spam 0 Reply Ah curumba. I meant to say Martin Luther King embraced Integration. Oops.
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At a speech in Harlem, Malcolm X explains: “If you’re interested in freedom, you need some judo, you need some karate–you need all the things that will help you fight for freedom…They can give us the back pay. Let’s join in. If this is what the negro wants, let’s join him. Let’s show him how to struggle, let’s show him how to fight. Let’s show him how to bring about a real revolution. You don’t need a debate. You don’t need a filibuster. You need some action.”

The Movement for Reparations
By the Honorable Minister Louis Farrakhan

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The Need for Unity and Healing in Black America

[Editor’s note: The following is an excerpt of a message delivered by Minister Farrakhan at Plymouth United Christian Congregational Church in Washington, D.C., on August 16, 2002, the eve of the Millions for Reparations March. Click here to order CD/DVD/]

In The Name of Allah, The Beneficent, The Merciful.

The Cause for which we are gathered is bigger than all of us who are gathered and, therefore, it is incumbent upon us to submerge our personalities, even our differing methodologies, religious persuasions or the lack thereof, for the Cause that is bigger than us all.

We are not here tonight because of ourselves; we are here because of those who went before us to pave the way for us. We must not be untrue to them and to those who struggled to make life what it is for us—nor should we relegate what we can do today to our children to do tomorrow. We should complete our assignment today, so that our children may work on the next phase of that assignment.

I heard Dr. Ron Daniels say, if there ever were a time that we needed unity as a people, that time is now. We are under assault from every quarter and the only way we can survive is that it must be “we” and not “I.”

We will survive if we recognize our need for one another.

The brilliance sitting here and sitting out there is needed. There is not one of us who does not bring something of value to the struggle. We may not all struggle in the same way, we may not have the same length or breadth in terms of impact, but, each one of us is important to bring about a successful outcome for what we desire.

We, who are in the movement for reparations, and I’m very glad to say “we,” because I definitely know that the Nation of Islam is a part of that movement for reparations. We must not betray our ancestors in the negotiation for what we feel is just and justly due to the children of the slaves.

It’s not about money. It’s about what is requisite to repair the damage. I see the Honorable Marcus Garvey as my grandfather and the Honorable Elijah Muhammad as my father. Both men have impacted on my life and I think that the founders of the Millions for Reparations rally, who met in Durban, South Africa, were not just talking, but there was a spirit moving them. The spirit of those who have gone on, who are not able to be here tonight, but who produced us that we might make an accounting of ourselves in our time period.

***

Liberation is not a one-day journey. Neither is reparation, for reparation and liberation really are synonymous. You won’t be free without the damage being repaired. In order to repair the damage, you must make a proper assessment of the damage.

Whenever you are in an accident, and most of us have been in some kind of accident, your car gets hit. There is a carmaker who knows all the parts that he put in it and how they should function, so that when you turn the key, you get a proper reaction.

But when you’ve been in an accident, you have to stop and an assessor comes out and looks at your car, assesses the damage and tells you what is needed to repair it and make it whole.

There is no question that we’ve been damaged and there’s no question that the damage has been so severe that some have said it’s totaled: “We don’t need to repair this, we need a new thing.” But the scripture says, “Behold I make all things new.” Sometimes you can take a thing that has been damaged to prove the power of your ability. When somebody says “Total it,” you say “No, I can bring it back”—that separates the real mechanic from the student.

In the 8th verse of the 16th chapter of Ezekiel,—he’s an old prophet, but he could see—he talks about some “damage.” He said: “Now when I passed by thee, and looked upon thee, behold, thy time was the time of love; and I spread my skirt over thee, and covered thy nakedness: yea, I swear unto thee, and entered into a covenant with thee, saith the Lord GOD, and thou becamest mine.” This is talking about something that was naked that needed covering; something that was unclean that needed washing.

In verses 4-6, he says: “And as for thy nativity, in the day thou wast born thy navel was not cut, neither wast thou washed in water to supple thee; thou wast not salted at all, nor swaddled at all. None eye pitied thee, to do any of these unto thee, to have compassion upon thee; but thou wast cast out in the open field, to the lothing of thy person, in the day that thou wast born. And when I passed by thee, and saw thee polluted in thine own blood, I said unto thee when thou wast in thy blood, Live; yea, I said unto thee when thou wast in thy blood, Live.”

That doesn’t make too much sense right now, but let’s look at it a little deeper: The only reason we are here for reparations is that nothing was done to repair the damage that 400 years of slavery and injustice had done to us.

“In the day that you were born” means that you have come forth out of the womb of confinement and gestation. But the day you were born, there was nobody to serve you; to cut the umbilical cord, to wash you, to swaddle you. You were polluted in your own blood. As you are developing in the womb, the placenta is a purification agency that allows good to come into the new life being formed. You are developing lungs to breathe on your own, eyes to see, ears to hear, brains to think, hands to work, feet to walk. But when you come forth, there is some attention that you need.

First of all, the umbilical cord has to be cut to separate you from that out of which you were born.

For 300 years we were confined in what was called chattel slavery. It was a period of gestation in the womb. America couldn’t go on. Like any mother, when it’s time, you’ve got to lay down and give birth to the child, or you die, or the baby dies—or both die.

In 1865, they said “you are free.” They couldn’t hold us in slavery, that narrow place of confinement. We had outgrown it. So the baby comes to birth, but the cord still is not cut. You have the ability to breathe on your own, to see, to think, but you are still tied to your slave master and his children, not in a proper, but in a very improper way. With nobody to serve your needs, your rights, your interests, you are laying in an open field now. Nobody to wash you with water and you are polluted in the blood of the womb.

What is the blood of the womb? It’s the life of slavery that gave you a slave mentality, this terrible feeling of inferiority. There is some damage that has been done. The baby is born, but it’s born damaged. It doesn’t know where it belongs. And if it knows where it belongs, it can’t go there because the cord that’s tying it has not been cut.

In the year 2002, we are polluted by the life of slavery.

Somebody walked by and said, “in a day of love, Live.” He didn’t just say it; he knew what to do to make it a reality. This wasn’t just a “jive mechanic.” This was somebody who knew that it could have been totaled, but he knew how to bring it back. He said, “Live.” You wouldn’t say “live” if it were alive.

It was in a state of death and only a Power bigger than the power of man could come and bring it back to life. He said, “When I walked by.” Who is this “I” talking? It must be that “I,” Who said, “Behold, I make all things new.” This is a terrible condition, something polluted in its own blood. It’s been lying there for 100 and some-odd years, polluted in the life of the slave. You’ve been to college, but you’re polluted. No matter how many doctorate degrees you have, they have not washed you.

I want you to hear me as your Brother. Don’t get arrogant over what the White man gave us because he never gave us enough to wash ourselves, otherwise the job would have been done. The repair work would have been done. Church couldn’t repair you because you’re a n—-r in the church. I’m not being disrespectful, but church, now, is an emotional experience, not a transforming experience. Neither is the mosque, nor the synagogue. Our organizations die from within as well as from without, because there is something sick within that needs to be healed.

All of our degrees are useful, but they are more useful after we have been washed. They are more useful after the umbilical cord is cut, because to cut the umbilical cord allows you to grow into yourself. It’s self-determination, not living under the shadow, nor in the shadow, of America. But living free to be what you are and who God created you to be.

Now in assessing the damage, you have to look at what happened to us spiritually, because there is a spiritual disconnect from The Reality of God. You know God and you love God, but the reality of how God works, you’re disconnected from that, because you are disconnected from The Law of Cause and Effect. You think things just happen. You don’t realize that God gives you wisdom to organize and make things happen. You are sitting around waiting for a Mystery God to give you what you are quite capable, if united, of giving yourself.

You have been stripped of an understanding of The Law of Cause and Effect, so you believe in a Mystery God. Some fellow floating around in the sky and you are floating around on earth, not grounded, not knowing the value of what’s under your foot, and willing to give it up to somebody else that they can use you to build a heaven for themselves on the earth. You’re waiting to die and go someplace to get what you can get on the earth.

That’s a spiritual disconnect from reality.

The Holy Qur’an teaches us that Allah (God) will never change the condition of a people until they change themselves.

How are we going to change? We don’t know how. Somebody has to walk by and say, “Live.” Not only say it, but produce life, spiritually. Not only are we messed up spiritually, but the life that we lived in slavery was immoral. The enemy never wanted marriage as an institution. “Make babies and let the slave master take care of them.” Is that still going on? Somebody needs a washing, don’t you think? The slave master went into our women and produced all these different shades and colors and textures of hair and shapes of noses and lips. He made those badges of honor and dishonor depending upon how light you were, how straight your hair was, how close you were to the “image of perfection,” which was White supremacy. That had a terrible effect on us mentally that needs repair to this day.

Why do our organizations die from within? Because the enemy can easily pit one of us against the other, because we’re so filled with jealousy and envy. When somebody appears to be more talented, we feel we must fight with him or her, rather than join him or her and help him or her.

Then, there are those of us who have been educated on the principle that the more you know, the more money you can get for what you know, so knowledge is not for cultivation. Knowledge is for you to gain the creature comforts of life, oftimes at the expense of others. Somebody needs a washing here.

We’ve been here since before the Mayflower. Here are people that came after the Mayflower, on the Mayflower, and take advantage of what America has to offer.

We’ve been here longer than anybody else, except the Native Americans and those who brought our fathers here in the beginning, and what do we have to show economically for the knowledge that we possess and the money that flows through our hands on a yearly basis? That’s why a monetary solution alone will not work. The mentality of the slave is such, that if you gave him money, within a month it would be right back in the hands of the former slave masters and their children.

You have spiritual damage, mental damage, emotional damage, psychological damage, political damage. Did I say social damage? Did I say scientific damage? We’ve been so damaged that the prophets referred to us as dead. Ezekiel offers a picture of us as dried bones in a valley. The bones could hear great teachers, and they would shake and they would rattle, but they wouldn’t do anything. You have had some of the greatest teachers that ever walked the earth.

***

It was reported in one newspaper that some of the families of victims of the horror of 9/11 were suing the governments of Saudi Arabia, the Sudan and some royal family members for several trillion dollars. They sued because of 3,000 deaths and buildings coming down. Thank you very much; you are making our case for us, because, if 3,000 people White, Black, Brown, Red and Yellow, Christians, Muslims, Jews, Hindus and Buddhists, who died in buildings, on airplanes and at the Pentagon deserve trillions of dollars, then put that on the scale of what some scholars say we lost in the Middle Passage coming into slavery. The money figure is staggering to fix this car.

That’s why nobody wants to talk about the level of reparations. They’ll talk about raising a monument, or, “Let’s have a museum for Black people.” Don’t you settle for that!

Elijah Muhammad, whether you agreed or disagreed with him, said to me one day that he wanted us to have eight or 10 states. Let them move out and leave everything. Don’t tear anything down. Leave the institutions, leave everything there and we will move in. And then we want you to take care of us for the next 20-25 years, until we are able to go for ourselves. Now don’t say you (Whites) can’t do it, because you’ve been taking care of Israel for 54 years. And Israel has not contributed to this nation like we have.

Now don’t go off half cocked, “That Farrakhan is at it again.” The Honorable Elijah Muhammad said, “Perhaps I know that they won’t give us one state, not even as small as Rhode Island, but that doesn’t stop me from asking.” He said, “I want my people to know what justice looks like.”

Justice is not a White woman. I’m not saying that you can’t fall in love, but what I am saying is we cannot accept their daughter as payment. We cannot accept their son as payment. We cannot accept White people’s weak attempt at affirmative action as payment. We cannot accept welfare as payment. Brothers and Sisters, when you add up what we have suffered and what we have contributed to a country, that to this day denies us the principle of justice, such measures are insufficient.

Whites may say, “well, ya’ll ain’t never going to get nothing from us.” I wouldn’t be so quick to say that. I saw what you did to O. J. Simpson. He got through the court all right. He was pronounced “not guilty,” but you couldn’t be satisfied with that. You brought him back to court and found him “responsible.” You started stripping him of whatever money he had that he didn’t hide because you said, “No. He’s not guilty, but he is responsible.”

The present generation of Whites is not guilty, but we have to ask, “Are you willing to accept responsibility?” They say, “Well, I didn’t do anything to those people.” No, but you now live a privileged life because of something that happened to us.

And to the Whites who would be heartened by these statements, I would love to dialogue with you. I want you to understand what responsibility is, because this is not going away.

The Movement for Reparations
President George Walker Bush: The Greatest Threat to World Peace
Unity generates power to change reality
The Disease of Envy among Black Leaders and Organizations
The relationship between spiritual and political leadership
Exclusive Interview with Minister Louis Farrakhan
Divine Solution to Save Ourselves
He Came That We May Have Life
Guidance to America and the world in a time of trouble
The American Gangster: An Executive Decision
Justifiable Homicide: Black youth in peril, Con’t
Justifiable Homicide: Black youth in peril, Part 2
Justifiable Homicide: Black Youth in Peril
Justifiable Homicide: Black youth in peril -part 1
Come out of her my people -Part 2
Minister Farrakhan: ‘Come Out of Her, My People’

My problem is that this site has grown so fast and I don’t yet have the money to get a laptop and internet connection which is expensive here in Nigeria- about 2,000dollars in all to keep up with servicing this site and posting and answering on time etc. Any BROTHERS/SISTERS who want to send me your widow’s mite toward this can contact me at:

yeyeolade@yahoo.com.
I am praying about it and I know that Olodumare(GOD) will provide so I can give you the BLACK RACE the service you deserve!
Your SISTER, BLACK for the RACE,
Yeye Akilimali Funua Olade

Oluwa ba wa se o . ASE! (God will work it out! in Yoruba. ASE=let it be so!)

Flickr Photos

OUR BLACK STANDARD OF BEAUTY!

BLACK-SKINNED WOMEN: QUEEN MOTHERS OF THE BLACK RACE AND ALL BEAUTY!
Why do I sing Praises of your Beautiful, Black, ebony,velvet skin,”Blacker than the sky at midnight”{1},your full mushroomed mouth, your beautiful broad nose, your generous “Congo hips” {2}and full-flowered backside? Because for too long many of the Black Race have abused, dishonored you, degraded and denied you your crown, Queen of Queens,Queen Mother of the Black Race, Black Beauty Supreme! From you all the beauty of the Black Race springs forth.In fact all the world’s beauty springs from you,Mother of all beauty of all the races of the world! Your Black midnight,licorice,dark black chocolate,beauty, is Blackness concentrated in your beautiful “Black-blueberry”{3} face!
First in the order of creation is always given respect by Afrikan tradition. The 1st wife, the 1st elder, the 1st kingdom, the 1st original inhabitants, of the earth-all are considered with honor. So it should be with Black Beauty-our darkest -skinned Sisters are the 1st Mothers of the Universe-Black as a color came before all the many tones of brown,red,yellow and white. But for too long our Dark-skinned Queens have not been given the respect and place of honor they deserve. IN FACT THE WHITE BOY HAS INTIATED the cycle of reversing the true order of things by turning upside down the pyramid of Beauty, and placing white-light on top and relegating the most beautiful Black-skinned Beauties to rock bottom!
So Black people have been taught well how to deny our most
beautiful one her crown, taught how to reject our Blackest, most Afrikan features, full lips and nose and mouth and woollest hair, for the weaker characteristics of the white race. Shame on Black people! When will we wake up to this Black Beauty concentrated, from whence all our lesser beauty comes. When will we give the crown of crowns,the throne of thrones, to the Blackest Queen of Queens?
Most of us who suffer from”mulatto-mentality” and “yellow fever”, as Fela, our great Nigerian Musician calls it, will go on and on about what about us lighter queens-aren’t we/they beautiful too, yet you/we should be aware that such queens have gotten all the play in the past and that even in Black Egypt one of the reasons for its downfall was the allowing the lighter ones of the race, to place themselves above the rest of us in the name of lightness and pride of light-closer/to/whiteness. So if we’re yellow,to light brown/red, then we should give respect where respect is due and not live off of the artificial white thrill of having “white features” as if it is an advantage. Where would you be without your BLACKEST great Grandmother? We should honor the Blackest part of ourselves, thus giving us true pride of Blackness, not verbal signifyin’ but real testifyin’ that BLACK is beautiful! If the Blackest, most Afrikan-featured Sister isn’t respected as the Supreme Beauty of the Race,the Black woman’s beauty is not really respected at all for what it really is(only in terms of how closer to white we look). We all reflect the strengths of this concentrated beauty in ourselves, all the manifestations of how Blackness can present itself are seen in our faces. Down to the milk-lightest of us, our Blackness is what dominates us whether physically or mentally. But the Mother is greater than the child and so the Blackest is greater than all the other tones of the Black Race. If we don’t respect our Blackest Queen, we don’t respect our True Black selves. We must have a Black value for BLACKNESS in features and skin tone. We must have a Black Standard of Beauty based on the Black-skinned woman. ALL PRAISES DUE TO OUR BLACK-SKINNED QUEEN-MOTHERS!
Sister Yeye Akilimali Funua Olade
1981,Lagos,Nigeria
BLACK NOTES: Let me give tribute to Brother Damu,House of Umoja(San Francisco) for{1}
{2}Brother O.O. Gabugan in the poem “Black Queen For a Day”,{3}Sister Sonia Sanchez in her poem “,Queens of the Universe”,for the quoted words used in the first part of this article.

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GABOUREY SIDIBE IS A BIG BLACK SKINNED BEAUTY WHO HAS BROKEN THE IMITATION WHITE GIRL GLASS STANDARD OF BEAUTY!